(On Hiatus) "Always" (Dramione)

#5

The first class of the day was History of Muggles. Hermione rather liked this class; learning the same facts but from a different perspective told her a lot about the general culture differences between wizards and muggles.

This class was in a large lecture hall, where almost everyone was present all at once. Due to the large number of students in the room, many were able to slack off and do whatever they wanted.

Colin Creevey seemed to have dozed off as soon as he sat down. His camera was hanging as usual around his neck, and his hair looked unusually tidy. He probably didn't sleep last night, that's why. Was up again all night hunting some story. I'll have to ask him later what he was after, Hermione thought to herself.

Neville was struggling with getting his pen to work. But as Hermione looked closer, she noticed that it was not a pen: but a strangling vine. It was slowly wrapping itself tighter around Neville's hand. Meanwhile, he absentmindedly kept trying to scribble with it in his notebook, wondering why the ink wasn't sticking.

"Psst, Neville!" He looked at Hermione. "That's a strangling vine!"

Neville made a surprised face, and nodded and smiled at Hermione in thanks. She almost expected him to panic, as this vine could easily take a limb off and was extremely tricky to get rid of. But Neville simply looked down at his wrapped (now nearly blue) hand, leaned down, seemed to whisper something softly, then stroked the spine of the plant gently with his left index finger.

Slowly the vine unwrapped itself from Neville's hand.

Professor Flitwick walked in, and began lecturing monotonously before he even fully stepped through the door.

"Just shows you how little he cares about the class," A girl in the row behind Hermione whispered to her friend.

Hermione sat in the front row; she always did. This way she could see any demonstrations easier, and if she had to ask a question (which she did frequently) she wouldn't have to yell.

In other classes they shared, Harry and Ginny would sit next to Hermione in the front row (though the two would always try, and fail, to get her to join them further back). In this particular class, though, they slacked off like the rest of the students. Since the professor never looked, or cared, they could freely play tic-tac-toe, battleship, or whatever other muggle-game Harry had taught Ginny that week.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Class had been going on for an hour now, so it was halfway done. Suddenly someone walked through the door.

It was Draco Malfoy, followed by Crabbe and Goyle. They just walked in, sat in the front row, and... that's it. The professor didn't even look in their direction.

Draco obviously looked happy with himself. He smirked as he looked around the room, at all the looks of admiration for just skipping half of class.

Hermione glanced briefly, then turned away. This is so childish, she thought, and went back to taking careful notes.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Finally class was over. Hermione packed up her books, and was on her way to the door.

"Oh, how cute, we got a geek in the room. Don't forget to annotate those notes later, mudblood, or you could miss something terribly fascinating!" Draco laughed at her.

Ah, back to your usual self, I see. Hmm, I'm almost a bit... disappointed. But it was clearly only a matter of time.

"Malfoy actually learned a new word! And a muggle word, no less! Won't your father be disappointed? Oh and by the way, geek isn't used as much anymore. We've evolved a bit, you see," Hermione responded in a confident, highly sarcastic tone.